Status and content updates for Auteureist™

The First Novel Written On An iPad

It’s official! I’ve completed NaNoWriMo 2010 with a novel of 51,308 words, and it was completely written on an Apple iPad using my Auteureist™ app. Now that that’s out of the way, time for a wrap up. The novel ended where I wanted it to end. Things resolved and all the threads came together nicely. I actually like what I created this year. The writing flowed and compared to last year, it went a lot easier. Not because I did more planning, or outlining—I didn’t. I had planned to, but when November 1 rolled around I pretty much had nothing—I’d tossed my original idea out as being dull and boring (I’m glad I did). It went better because I started with a good first sentence that opened the story up. I do best when I have a first sentence that is both a good “hook” and open-ended enough that it makes me think.

Here is last year’s: “Johnny Storm sat on a bench enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine.” As you can see, last year’s was dull, uninteresting. It was open-ended (way way open-ended), but it didn’t act as a hook. What resulted was a decent novel, not good, not bad.

Here is this year’s as a contrast: I set aside my anger and took a deep breath wiping the sweat from my brow. “Why did you do it?” I panted.”

This year’s opening sentence has you, the reader, asking “What’s going on? Why is “I” angry? What did “you” do to cause him to become angry?” Good hook, and open-ended—a good novel generally results. Will I edit/publish this year’s effort? It would be interesting to do so. I’m not sure.

Now onto Auteureist™ on the iPad. It was a lot easier and quicker to type on it than it was on the iPhone. That’s the main benefit. The app in landscape with its dual screens is very nice. It allows for a lot of flexibility that you don’t get on the iPhone’s single screen. There are rough spots. I’ve fixed a few, but there are some things I want to tweak. People didn’t report these because they weren’t really bugs per se, but they are nuisances that make using the app a bit rough under long writing sessions and circumstances. Again, I try to create applications that I want to use. Auteureist™ on the iPad is close to being that. But it needs some work. Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I can focus my efforts on resolving these issues and getting it out to all of you.

So that’s NaNoWriMo 2010! April and ScriptFrenzy are not that far off! On a side note, I’ve recently had a couple of people emailing me that they’ve lost their password, and could I recover it for them. Unfortunately, I’m sad to say, if you lose the password, there is nothing I can do. As the documentation on the website says, its your responsibility to protect your work and to sync and export your writing and to protect your password. If you feel you might forget or lose your password, you may be better off not having or using one in the app. Just a reminder! Protect your writing. Back it up, export it, sync it. If you lose it or your password, I can’t help you. Sorry.